cHApTEr 18. rEADy or noT (2 of 3)

Time itself seemed to freeze, with everyone standing exactly where they were, not daring to move. Then a faint whisper began to spread among the souls. Like a spark catching dry grass, it quickly flared, and the dead started murmuring among themselves, wondering whether they could really trust guides to the afterlife who were not even on friendly terms with each other.

The crowd of souls was growing uneasy. The trust Mioray had managed to build with his speech was starting to crumble. The portal he had conjured began to shrink. He had to do something if he wanted to help those souls move on. It was not about the competition anymore. It was about doing what was right.

“We’re not here because we’re trying to win, Amika,” he said carefully. With her, he had to choose his words with care. “We’re here because they need our help. They deserve it, and it’s the least we can do for them.”

“Like hell it is.” Amika stroked her coffee-blonde hair. Mioray had a bad feeling she was ready to turn it into those lethal spikes again. “If what you say is true, you’d come here after the competition was over. But you’re here now, hoping to score big. Don’t tell me I’m wrong.”

“So what if we are?” Matt snapped, stomping his foot and clenching his fists. “It’s not against the rules!”

Mioray groaned inwardly. He would have preferred Matt to stay quiet, but it was already too late. Not that he had expected Amika to listen to Mioray, but at least he might have stalled her, dampened her temper a little. Any chance of that vanished the moment Mioray noticed her hair giving a light wriggle. He was the only one who saw it; he was the only one there who had already fought her once.

“I didn’t say it was,” she replied, her lips thinning into a dangerous line. “Weren’t you listening to me? If anything, I’m glad you decided to go all in. I was beginning to think you were far too soft, always playing it safe. That would be disrespectful to my husband – for his killer to be such a pussy.”

It was impossible to grasp how wrong she was. Mioray opened his mouth, then shut it again a second later. He would never have gone into the crater if not for Matt. It was the boy who had the courage to risk everything for a bigger gain. Mioray only came because he happened to be the closest one to the crater when Kevin called.

And as for being Herman’s killer – first of all, he had not been the one to kill him, not while Herman was still alive in the truest sense of the word. After he became undead, though… maybe Mioray had dealt the final blow, but by then the Dismantler was already spiritually exhausted. The Order’s people had kept shooting him over and over, forcing him to regenerate without pause. Mioray took no pride in finishing off Impact Corpse. Frankly, he had been lucky to manage it at all.

But not lucky enough for Amika to understand any of that. He could explain it to her again and again, and a million times later they still would not see eye to eye on the subject. Amika’s hair drew back, readying for a strike.

“Hey, if you’re looking for someone brave, you don’t need to look any further.”

The soul of the man in the white shirt stepped forward, chest puffed out. He came to a stop between Mioray and Amika. His little intervention confused everyone. He seemed to be the only one who thought he had just made a cool entrance. Talk about misreading the room.

“Sorry, I prefer my men with at least a little flesh and bone on them!” Amika laughed brightly, passing straight through the man as if he weren’t there.

She came at Mioray as though she meant to punch him. He saw through the feint; her hair shot forward, reaching him faster than she could. He dodged to the side, and all her sharpened strands cut was air.

“I expected no less!” Amika yelled, whipping her head toward him. Her hair split into self-aware tentacles. They whistled through the air in an arc and lashed at him.

He barely had time to react. Out in the open, he was at a disadvantage. Back at the residential complex, at least he had corridors to maneuver through, but here he was an easy target. It felt as though he were a fish that believed itself free while a deadly net was slowly closing around it. In the split second he could spare, he noticed the souls scattering in every direction.

This was not going to end well.

“For Holy Mirabelle’s sake! Amika, this is not the time to fool around!” Mioray snapped. He ducked as one strand of her hair, sharp as a blade, grazed his cheek. “You’re frightening the dead and risking them turning into a Soul Collective!”

Amika drew her hair back and stood tall and proud just a few steps away from him. Mioray was defenseless, seated on the ground. Wherever he tried to dash, he would still be within her reach.

“If it comes to that, I’ll deal with it later,” she said, looking him up and down with a hard stare. “Right now, I have more pressing matters to handle.”

“What matters?!” Mioray shouted. “Why are you so obsessed with fighting me? You already know the truth about your husband! Do you still blame me for the fact that he’s gone?!”

“I don’t blame you. Not anymore. But you and I, Mioray, we have unfinished business. Last time we were interrupted before we could settle it.”

“What are you even talking about?!”

And he had been thinking of thanking her for keeping his wooden mask safe! Amika was delusional. She was making no sense. If she no longer blamed Mioray for Herman’s death, then there should have been nothing left between them. And yet there she was, standing in front of him, still wanting to hurt him. For what?

“Why is this so important to you that you’re willing to risk the competition?” he asked.

“Huh?” Amika looked at him as though he had said something stupid. “Who said anything about risking the competition? There were no rules saying you couldn’t take down the other participants.”

Mioray had no answer to that. Come to think of it, she was right. There were no such rules.

The conditions had been vague from the beginning, only that there had to be two teams of four, and that the team that guided more souls within four hours would win. How, where, and by what means that would be done had been left open to interpretation. With that in mind, taking out the opposing team was a perfectly valid strategy. If there were no opponents left, then guiding even one more soul than them would guarantee victory.

Was that Lokiel’s plan all along?

“Matt, now!” Mioray shouted.

At his command, a gush of amber resin, sparkling like fire in the sunlight, splashed over Amika’s hair. The sentient tentacles died at once, dropping under the weight of the sticky slime. In an instant, her coffee-blonde hair turned into a single orange mass, crowning her like a heavy translucent veil.

“What the…” she hissed in irritation and turned around. Behind her, Matt was still secreting the resin from his palms. “What do you think you’re doing?!”

“Look who’s talking!” Mioray snickered, pushing himself to his feet. “How does it feel to be outsmarted, Amika?”

Instead of answering, she tried to force her hair free from the resin, but the thick transparent substance held it fast. Nothing could repel Matt’s slime. Amika realized that quickly enough. She strode over to him and, grabbing him by the collar and lifting him into the air with one hand.

“How long until this comes off?” she demanded.

“It won’t,” Matt replied, far too pleased with himself. “Not until I call it off.”

“Okay.” Amika gave him a rough shake. “Then call it off. Otherwise, I’m going to rip your head off, little bird.”

Matt giggled at that, but Mioray could tell she wasn’t bluffing. Somehow, she reminded him of the Dismantler. A nearly identical scene flashed through his mind. Julie held in the air by Impact Corpse. The towering giant’s arm exploding, the blast taking her away.

Amika didn’t have that kind of destructive power, but she was the Dismantler’s wife. Maybe ripping Matt’s head off was an exaggeration, but she could definitely snap his neck. It wouldn’t kill the boy for good, but Mioray wanted to avoid unnecessary violence if he could.

“Wait!” he shouted the moment Amika brought her other hand up to Matt’s head and grabbed him by the hair. “I’m the one you want, right? If Matt calls off the slime, will you let him go?”

Amika shifted her gaze to Mioray, still holding Matt by the collar and hair.

“I don’t care about the boy. If he stops interfering, I won’t touch him.”

“Okay.” At least she could be reasoned with when it concerned someone other than him. “Okay, that sounds fair. Matt? Take the slime off Amika.”

“But–”

“Listen to me, Matt!” Mioray said sharply. The boy had to understand what was at stake. “Focus on the competition. Guide as many souls as you can while Amika and I finish our business.”

At that, Mioray turned and ran toward the nearest cluster of souls.

“Just give me a few seconds to get to a safe distance!” he shouted back to Matt.

“Get back here, you coward!” Amika yelled after him. Then she glared at the boy. “Get this crap out of my hair, now!”

Matt’s ringing laughter filled the air. How sweet for him that he found the situation amusing. As for Mioray, he was desperately trying to think of a way to survive Amika’s wrath. He reached the nearest cluster of souls and ran straight through them. He met no resistance as he passed through their translucent forms.

He figured that inside such a dense concentration of souls, it wouldn’t matter whether they were intangible or not. They would still block the view. And it turned out he was right. The moment he plunged deep into the mint-green sea of souls, both Amika and Matt disappeared from sight, along with everything else. Mioray kept running, swallowed by a thick green fog of shifting human silhouettes that gasped and complained as he pushed through them.

“Farah, Mia, we’re in the crater!” Mioray touched his earpiece. The other team would hear it too, but he took the risk. Besides, they might already know about it. “Matt is working with the souls, but we need your help. Amika attacked us! Be careful, the others might ambush you too.”

“What?” Farah answered at once. “Isn’t that against the rules?”

“Apparently not.”

“Why would it be against the rules, my friends?” Lokiel’s grating voice cut in. “Where’s the fun in that? I want you to let loose! Give it everything you’ve got!”

Mioray clicked his tongue.

“Why do you care?” he snapped. “It’s not like you can see us.”

“It’s alright,” Lokiel replied, unbothered. “Niles can. Did you know he’s quite the storyteller? He’s been describing to us everything you’re doing. It’s surprisingly entertaining! Clever idea, my friend, hiding in a crowd of souls. What are you going to come up with next? I can’t wait to see!”

I’m going to come up with a way to punch you in that annoying face!

Nothing irritated Mioray more than Lokiel.

“Just hold on,” Kevin’s voice came through the earpiece. “Farah and Mia are on their way.”

“Can’t have that!” In the next instant, deadly spikes of coffee-blonde hair tore through the air and the crowd of souls.

Mioray was hit in the side before he could jump clear, his shirt sliced open. The souls screamed and scattered, opening the space around him, and for a moment he caught sight of Amika as her hair lashed wildly through the fleeing crowd before he plunged into the next cluster of souls.

“Aha, got you!” Amika shouted with delight. She must have noticed the blood staining the spike of hair as it returned to her. “You’re not far away, are you, Mioray?”

Hiding among the souls had not been a bad idea, but Amika still had the advantage. Her ability was absurdly unfair compared to Mioray’s. She could cut him to pieces with her hair, while he could only launch parts of his body at her and what, punch her? The undead felt no pain, so all that would do was expose his position. That was the real danger. Even without knowing exactly where he was in the mint-green fog of souls, Amika had still managed to hit him.

The wound was only an irritation, but it was still there. Being undead meant he could keep himself from bleeding out by controlling the flow of his blood, though doing so forced him to devote part of his attention to it. Amika kept firing her spikes in all directions, trying to hit him again. Mioray avoided the attacks, but her recklessness was throwing the souls deeper into panic. If she kept this up, a Soul Collective would manifest in no time.

And just as that thought crossed his mind, Mioray spotted the soul of the man in the white shirt, the same one who had argued with Matt and then stepped between Mioray and Amika. Only now he no longer looked arrogant or full of himself. He was just as terrified as the others, trying to get as far away from them as he could.

Souls of the dead, unlike those with physical bodies, could make contact with one another. The man in the white shirt was shoving others out of his way. He pushed past another man, then a child, then an old woman… and then, instead of forcing the next soul aside, he merged with it.

The being formed from the two souls looked like something out of a children’s ghost story. The best way to describe it would be to say that it wore a white sheet over whatever counted as its body, and instead of a face it had three black, hollow holes. Two for eyes and one for a mouth.

This was the worst possible outcome. A dangerous creature that fed exclusively on human souls had appeared right in the middle of the largest feast of souls imaginable. The Soul Collective needed no invitation. It immediately began feeding on the others, rapidly growing larger and more grotesque. All the while, Amika’s hair continued raining down from every direction.

“Time out! Time out!” Mioray shouted, launching his arms at the spiritual beast. “The Soul Collective! It’s feeding on the souls!”

In the span of mere seconds, the Soul Collective devoured several of them, black mass swelling beneath the white sheet, clawed legs and arms jutting out in all directions. It had already taken on the same shape as the Soul Collective Mioray had fought in the abandoned house. Its mouth, lined with barbed-wire teeth, snapped open and shut as it lunged for another unlucky soul.

Mioray grabbed the creature by its legs. The Soul Collective, unlike an ordinary human soul, could be touched. Its spiritual power grew exponentially with every soul it consumed, so much so that it could affect the physical world and be affected by it in return. It almost managed to swallow another soul, but Mioray held it firmly in place, the black threads connecting his arms to his body pulled taut.

“Why do we always get interrupted?” Amika growled right beside him. For a moment, Mioray thought she was about to attack him again, but instead she strode past him toward the beast.

The Soul Collective was growing frustrated. It didn’t understand why it couldn’t move while its food – the souls of the dead – was escaping. It shrieked, and Mioray nearly lost his grip as he strained to keep hold. The shriek pierced straight into the mind and weakened the soul. Amika felt it too. Annoyed, she sent a flock of her hair at the beast, slicing through it, but to her surprise it did nothing. Her hair passed right through its body as if it were intangible.

“I can never understand these things!” She complained. “Even the weakest Soul Collective can turn physical, but the moment you try to damage it, it suddenly stops being so!”

The Soul Collective turned toward her, apparently noticing the attack even though it had done no damage. It bared its barbed-wire teeth and sprang at Amika, meaning to devour her. Mioray was yanked off balance and fell onto his back when the monster lunged in their direction.

Before the beast could reach her, Amika fired her hair at it again, but this time she didn’t attack. Instead, she tangled it in her strands while it was still in midair.

She didn’t stop there. Amika stomped heavily on the ground and swung her head in a full circle. Her hair, with the Soul Collective caught inside it, followed the motion, gathering speed as though trapped in a centrifuge. Then Amika let go. The creature shot free like a projectile from a catapult, hurled high into the air. Within seconds it was reduced to a distant shape, flying beyond the rim of the crater.

What Amika had just done was impressive in its sheer force. And at the same time, completely reckless.

“Amika, are you out of your mind?!” another voice rang in Mioray’s ear just before he could shout the same thing himself.

He looked up toward the ridge and saw two figures sliding down it. Two women, and, unfortunately, not the ones he had hoped for. These were Kiriya in her black gown and Saria in a grey sweatshirt and jeans. Saria was waving one hand and shouting into her earpiece.

“Why did you send that ghost flying?!” she went on. “It’s going to hunt down souls and living people all over the streets!”

“It interrupted me, so I got rid of it,” Amika shot back through the earpiece. “Opening a portal and forcing it inside takes too long. There are enough of us out in the streets. Somebody else can deal with the Soul Collective and score a few extra souls. It counts for more than one, right?”

There was a brief pause before the answer came; Erinel and Lokiel must have been settling the terms.

“Yes, that is correct,” Kevin confirmed, his voice coming through the earpiece. “You will receive as many points for the Soul Collective as the number of souls it consists of.”

Mioray let out a low groan. So that was it? Did nobody see what was wrong with this? That the Soul Collective had appeared as a direct result of their actions, all because of the rules – or rather, the lack of rules – in this insane competition?

“Farah, Mia,” Kevin continued, “locate the Soul Collective. While it’s not too big, you stand a good chance of handling it. You have experience.”

“Of course, boss, whatever you say, boss,” Farah answered. “Just keep in mind that when this is over, we’re going to have a long talk about delegating duties, because I really don’t like what’s happening here!”

Neither did Mioray. Especially not with the prospect of being taken down while every person capable of doing soulwork still mattered. Matt was still trying to persuade the souls he approached to move on, but they either ignored him or hurried away from him. Had he managed to guide even one soul while Mioray had been running from Amika? He had missed all of Niles’s announcements, if there had even been any.

The last score he heard had been nearly even. How different was it now? Capturing that Soul Collective could decide the outcome of this idiotic competition. He wanted to go after the spiritual beast himself, but he would be a fool to think he could manage it with Amika breathing down his neck.

And not just her. She now had support in the form of Kiriya and Saria. Mioray knew nothing about Kiriya’s ability. Saria had some kind of deflecting power, which suggested she was more defensive and therefore less dangerous. Kiriya, on the other hand, was a complete wildcard.

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